Historical "Good Guys and Regimes"

[zoomar]

To go with the "10 most evil" poll here's your opportunity to rank 10 randomly selected movements/regimes in history as "good guys"

(1) Greek Rationalist-Classical Civilization
(2) The Roman Empire
(3) Confucian China
(4) Early Christianity (prior to its adoption as Roman state church)
(5) Early Islamic Civilization
(6) The Ottoman Empire
(7) Napoleonic France
(8) The British Empire
(9) The United States
(10) Modern European Social Democracy

[Grey Wolf]

To go with the "10 most evil" poll here's your opportunity to rank 10 randomly selected movements/regimes in history as "good guys"

(1) Greek Rationalist-Classical Civilization
(2) The Roman Empire
(3) Confucian China
(4) Early Christianity (prior to its adoption as Roman state church)
(5) Early Islamic Civilization
(6) The Ottoman Empire
(7) Napoleonic France
(8) The British Empire
(9) The United States
(10) Modern European Social Democracy

Um, where's the poll, lol ? I wanna vote for either 8 or 10, am not quite sure :)

Grey Wolf

[Xen]

The Ottoman Empire as good guys? *RAE* We cant be talking about the same Ottoman Empire. I read too much of what they did when they invaded Europe to even consider them a good guy. The siege of Constantinople, and the battles of Vienna, butchering surrendoring soldiers, wiping out entire villages by the sword or impaling them, carting young girls off to their Empire to be sold as concubines. True all of them mentioned have problems, but the Ottomans were particularlly brutal to those they conquered, I know its a subject of controversy but there is also the Assyrian and Armenian stains on the Ottomans hands in the First World War, hardly the stuff of good guys.

[Diamond]

Oh God, here we go with the Ottoman/Armenian debate once again....

I go with the USA, of course. :D

And the British Empire should be in the 'Villains Poll'. :D :D

[Grey Wolf]

Oh I should think that the Ottoman Empire is in there because they were historically very tolerant towards minorities of ethnic or religious types. This is of course down to the fact that there was a religious set-up to the state and the first division was whether you were Muslim or not. If not, as long as you were 'people of the book' you were OK, as you were taken to be sort of second class God lovers. This gave these communities local self government and rights that religious minorities elsewhere in Europe lacked

Grey Wolf

[Faeelin]

Oh God, here we go with the Ottoman/Armenian debate once again....

I go with the USA, of course. :D

And the British Empire should be in the 'Villains Poll'. :D :D

I go with the US.

Britain's ambivalent, frankly.

Napoleon's empire isn't good, but it had the corsican mafia ruling Europe.

[Grey Wolf]

I go with the US.

Britain's ambivalent, frankly.

Napoleon's empire isn't good, but it had the corsican mafia ruling Europe.


Britain's ambivalent....but not the USA ? I am intrigued

Grey Wolf

[Faeelin]

Britain's ambivalent....but not the USA ? I am intrigued

Grey Wolf

Yeah. Check out what happened in the 40's in India. I also favor our policies before 1900. (The death of native americans, while tragic, was ineveitable).

[zoomar]

Actually, here's another one I'm embarrased to have left out:

(11) Gandhi and the nonviolent movement for Indian independence

And yes, Wolf, I put the Ottomans in the list for the reasons you mentioned.

[Grey Wolf]

Yeah. Check out what happened in the 40's in India. I also favor our policies before 1900. (The death of native americans, while tragic, was ineveitable).

Er wasn't the Indian disaster a symptom of INDEPENDENCE not of empire ?

And whilst tragic but inevitable can be used by anyone to justify anything really. Was it inevitable that the USA would sign treaties and break them ? Well, perhaps it WAS - after all when national interests are at heart the US can always point to the constitution that says that nothing should be more important to the country than the constitution so that when they want to they can abrogate treaties as not being in the national interest. I pass no particular comment, but its not exactly being a 'good guy' ~!

Oh, and then there was the Mexican War - read Lincoln's comments on that

Grey Wolf

[Faeelin]

Er wasn't the Indian disaster a symptom of INDEPENDENCE not of empire ?

I mean the famines where Wavell asked Britain to try to help and Churchill refused.

Oh, and then there was the Mexican War - read Lincoln's comments on that
Grey Wolf

Of course, there was also the invasion of southeast asia, and the opium war for drugs.

[zoomar]

Come on you bickering anglophones out there. There is really no logical way to have the USA "good" and the British Empire "bad", or visa versa. They share many of the same good and bad traits. "Ambivalent" to both I'll accept

[Grey Wolf]

Come on you bickering anglophones out there. There is really no logical way to have the USA "good" and the British Empire "bad", or visa versa. They share many of the same good and bad traits. "Ambivalent" to both I'll accept

I will agree to that :) IMHO the USA of today shows all the traits of the British Empire of yesteryear, both good and bad

Grey Wolf

[Diamond]

Well, if you'll look back at my post, the two :D :D were there to indicate I was JOKING . I actually have quite a bit of respect for a lot of the British Empire's policies, historical choices, etc.

That being said, I still pick the US. :cool:

[David Howery]

The US, of course. All others pale in the face of our benevolence and grace. Britain doesn't compare. They call the US 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'. What do they call Britain? 'Perfidious Albion'.. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but it doesn't sound like a compliment. How come Canada isn't on the list?

[aktarian]

Classical Greece. Altough I have troubles deciding between Sparta and Athens. If pressed I'd go with Sparta though.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

TOTALLY avoiding the 20th c., I think we're a bit too grown up here to be repeating MEDIEVAL propaganda, aren't we? These are the same folks who claimed Jews sacrifice and eat babies.

The Ottomans did occasionally massacre PoWs, as did the Christians. They did not massacre civilians, except those that died as the result of the sack of cities that did not surrender, as opposed to Christian armies, that raped and pillaged everywhere they went (4th Crusade, anyone?). Ottoman troops were executed on the spot for taking anything from peasants without compensation. The most famous massacre of PoWs occured after the battle of Nikopolis, when Bayazid massacred the PoWs in retaliation for the Crusader's massacre of the Muslims of Nicopolis; however the nobles were ransomed (Duh). And interestingly, in a battle that was a pretty close call, the Serbs remained on the Ottoman side, prefering the Sultan rule to Hungary. The mere fact that Muslims were not allowed alchohol would have made a very large difference in the behaviour of an Ottoman army vs. a Christian (not to mention military performance).

The Ottoman tax load was a fraction of what your typical Christian peasant faced, subject to feudal dues instead of the needs of a centralized government, and its hard to argue that the Ottomans were anything but the most religiously tolerant regime in the European world - their rise coincided with the horrific wars of religion wracking Europe, and the Jews of Istanbul are the direct decendants of those expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. Ottoman success was not just due to military superiority, but also organizational superiority and the desirability of Ottoman rule vice the rapacious rule of Feudal nobles. If you have ever read an account of the Hundred Years War, you would know what a huge problem the armies of mercenaries roaming around destroying everything were.

[Faeelin]

John, what about the muslim pogroms in grenada?

[DuQuense]

The US never broke a Treaty with the Indian Nations. For there to be a Treaty It has to be accepted by a 2\3 vote of the Senate. And it then becomes "US LAW". No Indian treaty has ever been Passed by the Senate. In Fact no Indian Treaty, Has ever been submitted to the Senate.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

John, what about the muslim pogroms in grenada?

Which pogroms? I don't recall there ever being a Muslim Carribean. Oh, wait, you mean GRANADA, not GRENADA. Do you mean what the Spanish did to the Muslims after the fall of Granada?

[DominusNovus]

Which pogroms? I don't recall there ever being a Muslim Carribean. Oh, wait, you mean GRANADA, not GRENADA. Do you mean what the Spanish did to the Muslims after the fall of Granada?

I seem to remember an article about how the Muslims in the area weren't as tolerant as popular opinion has it.

[Grey Wolf]

The US never broke a Treaty with the Indian Nations. For there to be a Treaty It has to be accepted by a 2\3 vote of the Senate. And it then becomes "US LAW". No Indian treaty has ever been Passed by the Senate. In Fact no Indian Treaty, Has ever been submitted to the Senate.

Um, Duquesne what do you make of this website then ?

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=012/llsl012.db&recNum=976

The very top one includes the phrase 'ratified by the Senate'

Note - these are not the treaties I was referring to (on the page the link above takes you to) but serve pretty much to show that the statement was wrong in their being no treaties and none ratified. Why did you think that was the case ?

Grey Wolf

[zoomar]

To me, it is largely irrelevant whether or not Indian treaties were formally ratified by the senate. They were presented to tribal leadership to represent the American government's solemn pledge to abide by certain agreements. If the goverment Indian agents did this with the knowledge the treaties would be ignored or broken at a later date(which I believe was often the case), the USA was displaying the same degree of honesty as Hitler's Germany.

Please note, however, I am not mentioning this to disparage the US conquest of the Indian lands, which was normative behavior by colonializing powers in the 18th and 19th centuries. It does not stop the US from being one of the chief "good guys" in history. It was perhaps "wrong", as was Hitler's lying at Munich and various similar acts of duplicity and imperialism by all powers, but was not "evil" - something I'd reserve for the deliberate murder of millions.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Well, Zoomar, I would still call it "evil", and it was considered such by many Americans at the time, but I think actions have to be looked at in a historical context. The US treatment of the Indians was evil, but on a scale that pales in comparison to what the other imperialist powers did. The Unites State's death toll will never top that of, for instance, Belgium.

[Leej]

The US, of course. All others pale in the face of our benevolence and grace. Britain doesn't compare. They call the US 'the land of the free and the home of the brave'. What do they call Britain? 'Perfidious Albion'.. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but it doesn't sound like a compliment. How come Canada isn't on the list?

I'm sure something similar would be said about Britain in its time. I never knew the US still believed that stuff anymore, I thought it was just from the 1800s with all the immigrants.

You have to put the regimes into perspective here, the Ottomans by todays standards are evil however by the standard of their time they were good.

I say Britain for certain, what was that someone said about India in the 40s?
I think we did OK with India in the 40s, promised them independance if they helped out with the war, they did and we complied. It was the Indians themselves who couldn't agree and caused the mass population movement and all that.
Britain been on the 'good guy' side of all the major wars (I know I'm being black and white there and in many there isn't really much of a good vs. bad but we were on the better of the two)
We did much better with natives then most other nations and stood for freedom and all that.

[David Howery]

wow, somebody took me seriously. Leej, I was kidding... I think you were the only one on the whole list who ever took my "we're the US, we're the greatest" comments seriously :)
Don't get me wrong, I still put the US at the top of the list. I'd put Canada second, but they weren't on the list (plus, they have that mildly annoying, "God save the Queen" thing). hmm... maybe Australia should be second, although they weren't on the list either. They don't have quite the same amount of "God save the Queen" attitude, and they have cool accents... however, Macsporan lives there, so that's a strike against them ;)
On second thought, Britain should be second... they stopped the French from ruling the world, and that has to count for something.... :cool:

[aktarian]

The Unites State's death toll will never top that of, for instance, Belgium.

Sure, just ask Vietnamese. And don't let them use that old "dead don't speak" argument on you. ;)

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Although it's difficult to put a positive spin on Vietnam, all I can say is that our intentions were not evil, and that the French are to blame.

Seriously though, the Belgians killed 10 million Congolese, purely for profit, whereas the US number was much lower, and the purpose was to defend freedom, although stupidity and military and bureaucratic inertia decided freedom lay in the Stone Age apparently, or maybe it was the "better dead than Red" thing.

Leej:

Perfidious = treacherous
Albion = an old term, used, usually poetically, for England or Great Britain.

Sheesh, the state of education these days. ;)

[aktarian]

Although it's difficult to put a positive spin on Vietnam, all I can say is that our intentions were not evil, and that the French are to blame.

Sure, blame everything on the French. Soon they'll be rensponsible for OBL as well. :rolleyes:


Seriously though, the Belgians killed 10 million Congolese, purely for profit, whereas the US number was much lower, and the purpose was to defend freedom, although stupidity and military and bureaucratic inertia decided freedom lay in the Stone Age apparently, or maybe it was the "better dead than Red" thing.

Does that lower number include all who died from chemicals US poured all over the place (cancer and such)?

[Xen]

Although it's difficult to put a positive spin on Vietnam, all I can say is that our intentions were not evil, and that the French are to blame.

Dont forget Eisenhower. He knew if there were open and honest elections in Vietnam that Ho Chi Minh would take them in a cake walk. He believed whole heartedly in the domino effect. In fact Eisenhower is responsible for many of the worst dictators that came to power in the Cold War. It was he who gave absolute power to the Shah killing democracy in Iran and giving birth to the Iranian Revolution, it was he who allowed Castro to come to power in Cuba when he could have easily dropped the 82d Airborne in and wiped out the communist rebels, it was he who has the bloodstains of Vietnam on his collective hands with LBJ and Nixon.

[Faeelin]

Which pogroms? I don't recall there ever being a Muslim Carribean. Oh, wait, you mean GRANADA, not GRENADA. Do you mean what the Spanish did to the Muslims after the fall of Granada?

Hiss. Hiss.

I meant the expulsion and massacre of jews in the city of Granada in spain in the early 11th century. Or the almohad persecution which drove jews to northern spain.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

The number of people killed by the US in Vietnam is a tiny fraction of the number killed by Belgium in the Congo, and once again, the motives were much different.

France deserves a large share of blame, having blackmailed the US into helping them recover Indochina, then anticommunist paranoia set in.

BTW, is Castro worse than his predecessor? I don't happen to think so. And the Shah? Can you please point out the giant trend toward democracy he crushed?

And I know anti-Americanism is all the fad right now, but only an ideologue could forget all the US has done for the world.

[Xen]

Sure, the Democracy in Iran to which I was referring was the one that was the one headed by Mohammed Mossadegh in the early 1950's. A member of the National Front Party, an organization with socialistic leanings that wanted to get rid of foreign influences that had been present since WWII, especially when it came to Iran's oil. He nationalized Iranian oil, which upset the British, the US felt he was making the country too socialistic. Both London and Washington began cooperating in planning to oust the Prime Minister, and successfully too. This opened way for the Shah to take absolute power in Iran, and proved a brutal dictator who was friendly with the west. By ousting Mossadegh it sewed the seeds of the Iranian Revolution, and opened the doors for the current troubles we are having in the region now.

As for Castro, hes not worse than Batista, but he is just as bad. The recent crack down on dissenters should spell that one out. Eisenhower had the opportunity to put a real democratic government on the Cuban Island. Though I generally agree with you that America's goods outweigh its evil, our cold war policy of supporting and installing dictators over democratically elected governments who we couldn't control should be condemned. Lots of people lost their lives, and poverty still reigns in most of those countries. Now Im not saying democracy would have cured poverty, but it could have gone a long way to it and would have caused less resentment.

[Leej]

>Perfidious = treacherous
Albion = an old term, used, usually poetically, for England or Great Britain.
<
huh?
What did I say?

[Grey Wolf]

Leej, when you quoted you didn't get it into quotes so it looks like its your comment and not David's

Grey Wolf

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Sorry, Leej, I was just defining "Perfidious Albion" for the wrong person.

I am amazed to hear Mossadegh called the leader of a democracy movement, since he seemed much more interested in siezing dictatorial powers than promoting democcracy, including the pressuring of the Majlis to give him emergency power, then rigging a referendum dissolving parliament, then trying to exile the Shah who was the only person who could stop him.

And the Shah was not exactly a "brutal dictator", or at least not by the

[David Howery]

Hmm... when it comes to deciding just who is the ultimate 'good guys', I don't think I'd pick any one nation, and just pick 'the western democracies' in general. To be sure, all of us have some bad things in our history, but to be practical, no other system on earth is as geared towards individual freedom and liberty as this group of nations. Our way of life isn't perfect, but living in one of the western democracies (any of them) is better than living in one of the other systems around the world....

[Keenir]

To go with the "10 most evil" poll here's your opportunity to rank 10 randomly selected movements/regimes in history as "good guys"

well, here's my votes...sorry this is late.



(3) Confucian China

disqualified, as I don't really know anything about their policies in Confucius' lifetime.




(6) The Ottoman Empire

very remarkable, both for their time & since then....how many other monarchs have married outside their religions?

(the English kings married the Welsh; the Ottomans married the Armenians)


(8) The British Empire

(5) Early Islamic Civilization
(9) The United States[/quote]


(2) The Roman Empire

(10) Modern European Social Democracy

bread and circuses, the pair of them.


and, tied for the nearly-the-worst-of-the-best:


(7) Napoleonic France

(1) Greek Rationalist-Classical Civilization

and the absolute worst:

(4) Early Christianity (prior to its adoption as Roman state church)

given explosives, and they'd be indistinguishable from a modern suicide bomber.

[Justin Pickard]

well, here's my votes...sorry this is late.

Only by two years. :D Seriously. There are people older than this thread...well...children.

[Straha]

10 the nonviolent independence movement for india. It prevented india from having to go through a BLOODY war for independence
9 greek rationalist civilization
8 the 19th century classical liberal movement
7 people who oppose the religious right in the US
6 the people who did the scientific revolution
5 Canada for providing a good role model to the US
4 The United States
3 British empire. The empire spread the ideas of liberal democracy around the world and planted the seeds leading to the US
2 the people who were enlightenment thinkers
1 Western Liberal Democracies

[MerryPrankster]

given explosives, and they'd be indistinguishable from a modern suicide bomber.

Proof, please.

If you're concerned about pogroms, the Library of Alexandria, etc. that was AFTER the power-corrupts process started, not before.

[Imajin]

Proof, please.

If you're concerned about pogroms, the Library of Alexandria, etc. that was AFTER the power-corrupts process started, not before.
MerryPrankster, when will you learn that all religous people are intrisnically evil, hateful, biased people who want nothing more than a destruction of all science and a return to the Dark Ages (or, in the case of early Christianity, the Dark Ages to happen) :rolleyes:

[Leej]

Leej:

Perfidious = treacherous
Albion = an old term, used, usually poetically, for England or Great Britain.

Sheesh, the state of education these days. ;)

....huh?

And this is a damn old thread...

[Leo Caesius]

I think Keenir's probably familiar with the scholarship of Peter Brown; he's probably the ranking St. Augustine expert, and a world leader in the study of Early Christianity. Here's what he has to say about the Syrian and Egyptian monks:The Syrians were the 'stars' of the ascetic movement: wild vagrants dressed in skins, their matted hair making them look like eagles, these 'men of fire' amazed and disquieted the Greco-Roman world by their histrionic gestures.

When the citizens of Antioch expected savage punishment after a riot in 387, the imperial commissioners suddenly found their way to the doomed city barred by a group of Syriac-speaking holy men. While these wild figures interceded for the city, and their speeches were translated from Syriac into Greek, the bystanders 'stood around', wrote a witness, 'and shivered'.

From Mesopotamia to North Africa, a wave of religious violence swept town and countryside: in 388 the monks burnt a synagogue at Callinicum near the Euphrates; at the same time, they terrorized the village-temples of Syria; in 391, the patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, called them in to 'purge' the city of the great shrine of Serapis, the Serapeum. Bands of monastic vigilantes, led by Schenudi of Atripe (died c. 466), patrolled the towns of Upper Egypt, ransacking the houses of pagan notables for idols. In North Africa, similar wandering monks, the 'Circumcellions', armed with cudgels called 'Israels', stalked the great estates, their cry of 'Praise be to God' more fearful than the roaring of a mountain lion. In 415, the Egyptian monks shocked educated opinion by lynching a noble Alexandrian woman, Hypatia.

Paganism, therefore, was brutally demolished from below. For the pagans, cowed by this unexpected wave of terrorism, it was the end of the world. 'If we are alive,' wrote one, 'then life itself is dead.'Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose...

[Paul Spring]

I thought "early Christians" referred to the pre-Constantine period, or even just the first 2 centuries. The mobs of fanatic monks, attacks on pagans, temples, etc., became a big deal 2-3 generations after Constantine, when Christianity had become a state religion.

With the early Christians, it was more likely to be the pagans coming to destroy their churches since they condemned other religions.

[Leo Caesius]

I thought "early Christians" referred to the pre-Constantine period, or even just the first 2 centuries. The mobs of fanatic monks, attacks on pagans, temples, etc., became a big deal 2-3 generations after Constantine, when Christianity had become a state religion.Constantine didn't make Christianity the state religion; he merely legalized it. It didn't really become the official religion of the state until much later.

[carlton_bach]

I thought "early Christians" referred to the pre-Constantine period, or even just the first 2 centuries. The mobs of fanatic monks, attacks on pagans, temples, etc., became a big deal 2-3 generations after Constantine, when Christianity had become a state religion.


Proof would be difficult to come by, given that the early Christians certainly had precious little opportunity to terrorise anyone in a state that disapproved of rebellion and disloyalty. However, the fate of some early dissenters within Christianity leaves me relatively little hope that they would have proved any different from their later cousins. Especially since the official church actually largely disapproved of the violent actions of mons and mobs, and in the case of the circumcellions went so far as to - what's the phrase - abandon them to the secular arm?.

[Paul Spring]

Proof would be difficult to come by, given that the early Christians certainly had precious little opportunity to terrorise anyone in a state that disapproved of rebellion and disloyalty. However, the fate of some early dissenters within Christianity leaves me relatively little hope that they would have proved any different from their later cousins. Especially since the official church actually largely disapproved of the violent actions of mons and mobs, and in the case of the circumcellions went so far as to - what's the phrase - abandon them to the secular arm?.

Christians in the pre-Constantine period killed dissenters within their own ranks? I'd never heard of that. I was under the impression that early Christian communities were pretty autonomous - if the community didn't like the views of a person or a small group, they were generally expelled, and ended up founding their own group.

By the end of the 4th-beginning of the 5th century, most of the important government officials were at least nominally Christian, and they usually condoned or encouraged mobs that attacked pagans. It seems to have been as much about politics and power as about religion - the government was promoting a "new order" partly based on the "official" version of Christianity, and they wanted to get rid of centers of rival groups, whether pagan temples or the churches of Christian groups that didn't follow the official line - ie "heretics".

[Keenir]

To go with the "10 most evil" poll here's your opportunity to rank 10 randomly selected movements/regimes in history as "good guys"

well, here's my votes...sorry this is late.



(3) Confucian China

disqualified, as I don't really know anything about their policies in Confucius' lifetime.




(6) The Ottoman Empire

very remarkable, both for their time & since then....how many other monarchs have married outside their religions?

(the English kings married the Welsh; the Ottomans married the Armenians)


(8) The British Empire

(5) Early Islamic Civilization
(9) The United States[/quote]


(2) The Roman Empire

(10) Modern European Social Democracy

bread and circuses, the pair of them.


and, tied for the nearly-the-worst-of-the-best:


(7) Napoleonic France

(1) Greek Rationalist-Classical Civilization

and the absolute worst:

(4) Early Christianity (prior to its adoption as Roman state church)

given explosives, and they'd be indistinguishable from a modern suicide bomber.

[Keenir]

Proof would be difficult to come by, given that the early Christians certainly had precious little opportunity to terrorise anyone in a state that disapproved of rebellion and disloyalty. However, the fate of some early dissenters within Christianity leaves me relatively little hope that they would have proved any different from their later cousins. Especially since the official church actually largely disapproved of the violent actions of mons and mobs, and in the case of the circumcellions went so far as to - what's the phrase - abandon them to the secular arm?.

actually, I was referring more to the early Christians' utter willingness to die\be killed.

the threat of death didn't worry them one bit.


my apologies for my earlier misclarity.

[carlton_bach]

Christians in the pre-Constantine period killed dissenters within their own ranks? I'd never heard of that. I was under the impression that early Christian communities were pretty autonomous - if the community didn't like the views of a person or a small group, they were generally expelled, and ended up founding their own group.


They may have killed, but if they did, it was rare. What they did do was anathematise - exclude them from the community completely. And it appears many groups did this with gay abandon. Now, this may not sound like much, but the anathema does basically mean "you matter nothing, now go away and die and go to hell!". Any group with that degree of conern over spiritual purity and unanimity is bad news when given power.

[Rick Robinson]

Oh I should think that the Ottoman Empire is in there because they were historically very tolerant towards minorities of ethnic or religious types. This gave these communities local self government and rights that religious minorities elsewhere in Europe lacked

Ironically, isn't this in the background of the current situation in Iraq? That is, the Ottomans left local affairs largely in the hand of Sunni or Shia traditional leaders, so that those affinities were the basis of community identity and much of local government.

Needless to say, this does not make the Ottomans responsible for events 90 years after the end of their rule.

-- Rick

[SkyEmperor]

and the absolute worst:


given explosives, and they'd be indistinguishable from a modern suicide bomber.

REally, how do you figure? Ive been reading into them lately. They ran the gamut in terms of theology, but I havent seen any evidence of violence.

There where a few violent acts against Rome, but mostly in retaliation for mass genocide. (In one day the Romans crucified 5000 Christians, and burned their bodies to illuminate the roads into the city).

The early Christian Church was a very peaceful and enlightened movement.

they are slod the only ones on the list without a terrible blackmark on their record, so they get my vote.

[Keenir]

The early Christian Church was a very peaceful and enlightened movement.

they are slod the only ones on the list without a terrible blackmark on their record, so they get my vote.

(here comes an analogy)

its one thing to not get out of the way of an oncoming train...its quite another to get in its way. both were lumped under the word martyr in early Christendom -- and that alone, imho, makes them dangerous.

[carlton_bach]

(In one day the Romans crucified 5000 Christians, and burned their bodies to illuminate the roads into the city).


Now that would require proof. Mass cricifixions on this scale were so rare in Roman days that they were invariably recorded and commented on, and this one - I'd like to see the source.


The early Christian Church was a very peaceful and enlightened movement.

they are slod the only ones on the list without a terrible blackmark on their record, so they get my vote.

They are the only ones on the list never to govern a nation or Empire. Opposition is always easier. That is also why I would exclude them from this list altogether - they belong grouped with other religious movements outside of or in opposition to government, not with Empires and dominant ideologies.